Landscapes: not my cup of tea…. but…. sometimes…. they are.
As a photographer by trade in a previous life, landscapes often entice me to grab my camera and take a photograph. They do not often tempt me to try and paint them. I am not sure why that is. Probably because the grandness of nature or even a city is so hard to capture in art. It is easier to photograph. Yet, there are exceptions. And for me the exceptions are driven by either a technical challenge, or just a fun project to try my hand at.
You will see several examples on my walls today.
Port Stanley Icicles
Port Stanley is one of my favourite places to photograph, but in the winter of 2024 it outdid itself during a frigid ice-storm. The entrance of the Pier changed into an artwork, a sculpture of icicles made by Mother Nature. To my eye, the lamppost at the fence looked like a dancing figure. And I wanted to try and paint it. It was certainly a challenge for me, because I had never even attempted to paint a landscape, let alone one covered in ice. But it became a really nice project that I enjoyed working on. I am happy with the results and I can only hope that you can see the dancer!
Sunset on the old horse barn
One of my very first acrylic paintings was actually also a landscape. Or should I say: barn-scape? It was a wooden old horse barn, painted light and dark by sunset. And the cherry on the cake were 3 horses almost hidden in the darker parts of the scene. Again I used my camera to help commit the scene to memory. And off I went, back home, out came the easel, the paints and the brushes and I found myself trying to recreate the scene in paints. I cannot believe how well I did with the barn, the texture of the planks. But it was hard for me to make the greenery surrounding the barn believable. These are paintings that are important to me. Because I can see how much I have grown in the use of acrylic paint and my brushwork. Not often do I get rid of older works for that reason alone. I may never enter them into a competition, because they are no longer representative of my best. But they are milestones in my journey as an artist.
The lone tree
Here is another example of a landscape. This one is special because it was painted as a protest piece. The tree is in the GTA area and now surrounded by new highways and no doubt future new suburban developments. And I have no doubt it will be taken down. And my heart will cry when that happens. Because if these trees could talk… what stories could they tell about the old farm fields, family homesteads and things that happened there? Maybe some farmers ate their lunches of home-made bread in the shade of this tree in its younger years. Maybe lovers cut their initials in its trunk. Preserving a moment in time. And for sure many critters, winged and otherwise, used it as a home or a source of food. Before a new tree will reach this size, decennia will pass and I am sure they will not have the same charm.
Painting as a way to protest
You will notice some protest signs in this painting shown above, and my version of barbed wire. At the time this was relevant, there were even more signs, in the layout and house style of the Halton area, where this tree used to stand and maybe still stands. The painting was layed out at a yard sale the local mayor was said to come and visit and I wanted him to see it. I never saw the mayor, but he might have been there. And I can only hope that he understood the message. That is something art can do: express how we feel about something. That is part of its place in society. Has been for years and hopefully will stay like that now and in the future.
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